Grieving Workers Brace for Mays's Closing

By NADINE BROZAN

Published: December 30, 1988

The sign in a front window at the Mays department store on Fulton Street in Brooklyn reads ''Nice to See You Again,'' but after 6 P.M. tomorrow, the message to shoppers will be moot.

The last three stores in the once lustrous J. W. Mays discount chain will close six hours before the end of the year and six days before the liquidators move in.

The stores are being closed after more than six years of financial difficulties. The company will be converted to a real-estate concern and will sell or lease its stores and other properties.

The mood in Brooklyn yesterday, one day after the employees were told the news by their supervisors or by the personnel department, was one of somber - and occasionally tearful - resignation.

Executives, most of whom refused to talk to a reporter and were closeted in meetings in the penthouse of the building, would not even divulge how many employees would be let go. No Signs Announce Closing

George Silva, the director of operations, said he oversaw 1,200 people, but in a telephone interview, Alex Slobodin, executive vice president of the company, said there were no more than 1,000 employees at all three stores. In addiiton to the flagship branch in the Fulton Mall, the stores are at Union Square in Manhattan and in Jamaica, Queens.

Downstairs, on the selling floors, it was business as usual. No signs had been posted announcing the end.

''I am devastated,'' said Madeline Sessa Cordello, 71 years old, whose mother got her an after-school job in the store 53 years ago. ''She knew the store manager, Mr. Bloom, and he hired me as a stock girl while I was in high school,'' Mrs. Cordello said, fighting back tears.

Like many employees, Mrs. Cordello, known to generations of Starlight boutique and Missy department shoppers as Miss Sesso, worked her way up the retail ladder. ''When I finished high school, I became a full-time salesgirl, and at 19 1/2, an assistant manager,'' she recalled. ''Twenty-five years ago, I became an executive manager. This was a phenomenal place to work. We always had fantastic bosses.''

Throughout the store, workers referred to themselves as a family. In the women's coat department, Yetta Eigen, 65, who also spent her entire working life, 32 years, in the store, was collecting her colleagues' addresses. ''Everybody was close, sales help, managers, buyer, everybody,'' she said. ''Customers, too. They're calling me up, asking, 'Is it true?' ''

The chain of stores, appealing mainly to people of moderate and low incomes and some affluent bargain hunters, represents a merchandising operation that seems obsolete: the giant, all-purpose department store. In closing, it follows in the path of Ohrbach's, Korvettes and S. Klein-on-the-Square.

Indeed, the interior of the Mays store in Brooklyn, with no decorations, displays or mannequins, with garments hung on plain pipe racks, showed signs of both pragmatism and shabbiness. A Merchandising Dream

But at one time Mays was an American merchandising dream come true. The company was established in 1924 by the late Joe Weinstein, an immigrant from Galicia, a region on the border of Poland and the Soviet Union, who sold women's coats and dresses in an eight-foot-wide space where the Brooklyn store now stands. He chose the name May, he said, because ''it reminded me of the countryside and the flowers and the springtime.''

The chain prospered for decades, with as many as nine stores, but, like other all-purpose discount stores, it faltered as more specialized discount stores, factory outlets and catalogue merchants prospered. In 1982, the company filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code. Five suburban stores were closed that year.

The rumors of other closings had circulated for months, in particular since the announcement that the Union Square branch would be sold to a real-estate group. So there was little surprise this week.

''I knew when I was told not to order any spring merchandise,'' said Elliott Fuchs, a menswear buyer. Some Will Retire

Some employees, Mrs. Cordello and Mrs. Eigen among them, said they would retire. Others said they would look for jobs and were expecting severance checks, although they had not been told how much they would receive.

Jim Lucas, president of Local 888 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, said those employed for at least three years will receive one week's pay for each year worked, with a cap of four weeks. In addition, Mr. Slobodin, the executive vice president, said bonuses, based on a percentage of salary that he would not disclose, would be distributed.

Shoppers who had not heard about the closing seemed stunned when told and many of those who had heard either phoned to confirm their fears or came in for last-minute purchases. 'Prices Were Always Fair'

As Naomi Thomas, who has been a Brooklyn Mays customer for almost 20 years, said: ''You could always find what you wanted here, and the prices were always fair. Even someone on welfare could shop here. Now whatever you buy, it will be a souvenir.''

In a statement, Borough President Howard Golden of Brooklyn said: ''I am extremely concerned about the loss of Mays department store and its impact on the Fulton Mall shopping area. At the same time I remain hopeful about downtown Brooklyn's future, given its resurgence with major economic development projects adjoining Fulton Mall.''

Abraham & Straus is nearby, and last summer, the Campeau Corporation, the Canadian real-estate and retailing giant, and the Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation, the largest American builder of shopping centers, said they were considering a major redevelopment project in the area.

But at her hot dog-shish kebab stand outside Mays, Irene Laskaratos was pessimistic. ''Closing Mays is a terrible idea,'' she said. ''The neighborhood is always busy because of Mays. Where will the poor people shop?''